Lynn Ischay, The Plain DealerRick Nagin, a candidate in Cleveland’s Ward 14 race, reviews the ward’s boundaries with a group of supporters earlier this month at a meeting. Nagin will face Brian Cummins in the Nov. 3 runoff.CLEVELAND, Ohio — For years, Rick Nagin had been dismissed as a fringe contender, a communist on a decades-long pursuit of public office.

But all that changed this month when Nagin was one of two candidates to emerge from a contentious City Council primary in Cleveland's Ward 14 to notch his first political victory.

Nagin combined with Brian Cummins, whose Ward 15 seat was chopped in a council downsizing, to beat incumbent Joe Santiago, former Councilman Nelson Cintron Jr. and three others. A strong second-place finish earned Nagin a spot in a Nov. 3 runoff against Cummins.

The possibility of a Nagin win -- greater than ever before -- presents perhaps the most fascinating storyline in this fall's mayoral and council elections. If Nagin defeats Cummins, he will be the first known communist to serve on Cleveland's council, at least in recent memory.

The historical significance is not lost on Nagin, who would fulfill a goal he said was inspired in the 1970s by Communist Party USA standard-bearer Gus Hall. Yet at times in his latest campaign, Nagin has seemed unprepared or unhappy to discuss his beliefs.

He writes for the party's newspaper -- his most recent article, about a labor rally, appeared in May -- but complains when the word "communist" appears by his name in The Plain Dealer. In a recent interview that he was reluctant to grant, he equated the word with a racial slur.

"It's an epithet in this country," said Nagin, 68. "Like using the 'n' word."

Nagin even suggests that the Communist Party he joined 39 years ago needs a new name.

Cummins wonders if Nagin is trying to obscure a potentially hot-button topic.

"It's a fair issue as it pertains to a candidate's professional experience," said Cummins, adding that he will seek to draw contrasts between his r sum and Nagin's.

Turn towardthe left

Council elections in Cleveland are nonpartisan, but Nagin repeatedly reminds voters that he is a registered Democrat. He flaunts his ties to organized labor and to U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat whose campaigns Nagin has worked on as a volunteer.

When communism questions come up, Nagin prefers to characterize himself as for the working people and against corporate greed. When the Hispanic newspaper El Sol de Cleveland asked Nagin if he was a communist or socialist, he noted that a Rasmussen poll this year showed that 30 percent of Democrats believe in socialism, "as I do."

Nagin, in his recent interview, said his migration to the far left began in the 1960s.

John F. Kennedy's presidency and the Vietnam War were defining moments of Nagin's years studying science at Harvard University and Rockefeller University in New York. Kennedy's assassination, he said, "really drove home to me the right-wing danger in this country."

Nagin was obsessed with stopping the war and curious about socialism. The war, he thought, was "really to extend corporate capitalism to southeast Asia" and "a threat to democracy in the U.S." He began reading communist publications after receiving one at a peace rally.

Leaving behind his biochemistry degree and doctorate in biology, Nagin joined the Communist Party in 1970 and began writing for its newspaper, known today as the People's Weekly World.

Nagin's party involvement led him to Cleveland, where communists hoped to gain traction with steelworkers. It also led him to Gus Hall, the party's leader, who had become a perennial candidate for president. Nagin covered the campaigns.

"I was just fascinated with how he was able to talk about these progressive programs -- things we talk about today -- national health care, public-works programs," Nagin said.

In 1980, Hall recruited Nagin, who had become Ohio Communist Party chairman, for a national slate of communist candidates. Nagin made the U.S. Senate ballot as an independent and received more than 40,000 votes in his race against John Glenn, the incumbent Democrat.

Nagin was encouraged. A year later, he challenged Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, a Republican. His candidacy generated little interest, as did subsequent bids for the Ohio House.

"To me, it was a way of breaking down a lot of Cold War prejudices," Nagin said of his early, long-shot political campaigns. "At some point, I figured, I was going to have to connect with the people. I finally realized that I needed to run from the grass roots."

A footin the door

Noticing a large influx of Puerto Ricans in his West Side Cleveland neighborhood, Nagin organized a voter registration drive for Hispanics. In 1989, he launched the first of three failed bids for the Ward 14 council seat. Eight years later, Cintron became the city's first Hispanic councilman and chose Nagin, one of his opponents, to be his City Hall aide.

Nagin resigned as head of the Ohio Communist Party to take the council job. He served as Cintron's go-to guy for seven years before being fired because he had begun to assemble a campaign to seek the Ward 15 council seat without the blessing of council leaders.

As in previous council races, Nagin failed to finish first or second and emerge from the primary. He placed third behind incumbent Emily Lipovan and Cummins, the eventual winner.

Nagin's candidacy this year for the Ward 14 seat surprised some. Cintron, his former boss and ally, had been ousted four years earlier by Joe Santiago and was seeking a comeback.

But Nagin said redrawn ward boundaries convinced him that this might be his year. His Brooklyn Centre neighborhood, part of the old Ward 15, is being tucked into a new Ward 14. He beat Cummins in those precincts in the 2005 primary. And he believes that Hispanic voters familiar with him from his role as Cintron's aide have tired of Cintron and Santiago.

Soon, opponents realized that Nagin no longer was an also-ran. He was a heavyweight.

His years of work on behalf of organized labor scored him a second straight endorsement from the North Shore Federation of Labor. He picked up support from other organized-labor interests as well as several key Hispanic activists. Nagin yard signs appeared overnight in large numbers.

Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the local AFL-CIO chapter, said Nagin was a paid political coordinator for the group during the 2006 elections and volunteered in 2008.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's loyalty to someone who has paid his dues," Applegate said of the Nagin endorsement. "It appears to me that he has a better chance this time than last time."

Nagin also trumpets an endorsement he said he received last month from Kucinich, the influential West Side congressman. But Kucinich has not responded to requests to discuss or even confirm his support. He caught flak in the 1990s for allowing Nagin to be a volunteer.

Long roadnot over

What explains Nagin's rise after so many years?

Perhaps Nagin has stuck around long enough that voters uneasy with the thought of a communist representative have warmed to the idea. Maybe, as he likes to believe, the country's political mood is shifting to the left with the election last fall of Barack Obama as president.

"I think it's significant," Nagin said of a communist being a viable council candidate in a large city. But, he says: "This is not a party campaign. I am a coalition candidate."

Even so, his candidacy has excited other communists.

Part of the $6,650 in campaign contributions that Nagin disclosed before the primary came from people whose names appear as writers or subjects in the People's Weekly World.

Wallace Kaufman, who replaced Nagin as chairman of the Ohio Communist Party, gave Nagin $1,000. Another $700 came from William Mackovich, a retired steelworker from Chicago who this year pledged his $250 federal stimulus check to the communist newspaper.

"He's always been fighting for working people," Mackovich said in a phone interview. "It's a different ballgame today. You tell people that you're a communist, they say, 'So what?' "

Nagin also received $100 from someone whose family name is synonymous with capitalism: David Rockefeller Jr. Nagin attended prep school with the great-grandson of the oil baron.

Cummins believes Nagin's success is largely attributable to name recognition attained after years of appearing on ballots in West Side precincts. Voters may be past the communist issue, but Cummins said that will not stop him from comparing his record with Nagin's.

As both a Democrat and member of the Green Party, Cummins acknowledges sharing common ground with Nagin in that both have "not been satisfied with the two-party system."

But that is where the similarities end. Cummins is researching old news articles that Nagin has been quoted in, as well as pieces he has written for the People's Weekly World. To draw a contrast, Cummins cited a 1990 interview in which Nagin discussed his communist views.

"In 1990," Cummins said, "I was going overseas for the Peace Corps."

Others are unsure how Nagin's politics will play.

"That's up to the voters to decide," Applegate said.

Asked if Nagin's beliefs might affect which council committee assignments he receives if elected, Council President Martin J. Sweeney said he would need to know more about Nagin.

All 19 council members elected for new terms this year are likely to be Democrats, but Nagin acknowledges that he probably would lean further to the left than his colleagues.

And though he also acknowledges that a victory would hearten those who share his ideals, Nagin does not wish to be known as the "communist councilman" if he wins Nov. 3.

"There has been 50 years of Cold War propaganda that has demonized the word 'communist,' " he said. "In the minds of American people, they think communist means that I'm un-American, unpatriotic, anti-democracy. People have no idea what it is, what it stands for.

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